


To Sleep, Perchance To...

by chicago_ruth



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Do Not Archive, Dream Sex, M/M, Sensory Deprivation, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicago_ruth/pseuds/chicago_ruth
Summary: Tim's nightmares seep into the waking world--or maybe the waking world seeps into his dreams.





	To Sleep, Perchance To...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



> Spoilers through ep 104. If later episodes joss this... well, enjoy the porn anyway. :P

Does he dream? Tim isn’t sure. 

Nightmares come often: visions of worms crawling all over the floor and walls, devouring him, rendering him a rotting, filthy vessel for writhing maggots.

He wakes in a cold sweat, and again there is something there in the corner of his eye. When he turns, the wall is simple and white.

He scratches at his scars, and goes to take the hottest shower he can stand.

* * *

It starts with a streak.

A blur.

An artifact, hovering around the edges of his vision.

Tim wakes, but the darkness remains, hovering just out of sight. He blinks, and it recedes.

He gets dressed and goes to the Institute. He chats with Martin and Basira and Melanie. He snipes at Jon. He avoids Elias.

And when he gets home, too exhausted and angry and terrified to go out for drinks or to try to pull, he falls into bed and sleeps.

* * *

Does he dream?

Tim knows he has nightmares. But does he _dream_? Does he have anything on his mind except for the Institute, the monsters, the certainty that no matter what he does, he’ll end up dead?

* * *

“You should join us for a drink. We’re all going. That is, me and Basira and Melanie,” Martin says one evening, and the old Tim would have said yes, because the old Tim cared.

Current Tim feels sorry for Martin. Current Tim wishes Martin would grow a spine and fight Jon and Elias. Current Tim thinks it’s all a waste of time.

“Oh, Jon! You should come too,” Martin calls out.

Tim turns and sees Jon walking past. Jon is caught like a deer in headlights. When he takes a step, a ghost of him stays behind, lingering where he was before. The ghost smirks at him, moving its lips soundlessly. Taunting Tim.

Tim blinks and the ghost is gone, and the only Jon left is the awkward one, the one that doesn’t know how to deal with people. The one that might just take Martin up on his offer and might make a few steps closer to friendship.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll come,” Tim says, closing the gap between him and Martin. He pats Martin on the shoulder. “The usual place?”

Martin beams, while Jon’s expression morphs from hopeful to blank.

“So, Jon? Are you in too?” Tim asks pointedly.

And Jon must know what Tim is doing, but Jon shakes his head anyway and responds, “No, there’s a statement I need to follow up on.”

Naturally Martin is disappointed, but he’ll get over it. He always does. And he keeps coming back for more, like a puppy that thinks maybe this time, its owner won’t kick it.

* * *

Does he dream?

Do the nightmares that twist and writhe, that wrap themselves around Tim and worm their way into his eyes, his mouth, his ears, his nose, under his skin—do these nightmares count as dreams, when they are the only thing Tim sees anymore?

He wakes with sweat cooling on his skin and long ropes of darkness twining across his bedroom ceiling.

Tim rolls over to stare at his bedside alarm clock, and it blinks at him slowly, its electronic digits disappearing and reappearing. 

When he dares to look at the ceiling again, only a single dark thread remains.

* * *

They go to the usual pub, and Tim drinks and drinks. Maybe his vision blurs, but what does it matter? Darkness is creeping in on the sides even when he doesn’t drink, and at least this way he can pretend there’s a reason for the way the lights hover in the air, the way he sees the trails people leave when they walk across the room.

He goes home with a man. 

Or at least, Tim _thinks_ he’s going home with a man. It’s hard to tell. He’s very drunk, and there’s so much darkness lingering everywhere now. Did he say goodbye to Martin, Melanie, and Basira? 

“Wait,” he says to the man—probably a man, definitely a man, please let it be a man. “My friends—”

“We’re here,” the man responds. “This is your place, correct?”

When Tim turns his head, the streetlamps follow his eyes, streaking like paint across the dark. He sees his block of flats.

“What are you?” he asks the man. The ghostly echoes of the streetlamps illuminate the man’s face: sharp nose, piercing eyes, and a crooked smile. Something about those green eyes is off, unnatural, and Tim has enough sense left that he staggers out of the man’s arms.

The man, the thing, the _monster_ expands, staring at Tim, grinning at him. Despite the distance between them, it has no trouble wrapping a hand around Tim’s arm. Then it pulls, drawing Tim into its embrace.

Tim thinks he screams. He twists as much as he can, grateful for the streaks of light still dancing across his vision, protecting him from the darkness of this being.

The streetlamps flicker out.

* * *

Does he dream? The nightmare is never-ending. 

Tim regrets going home with the man, the thing that looks like a man in the light but is monstrous and unknowable in the dark. It is no longer worms crawling under his skin, but darkness. It boils his blood, bursts his veins. It tears Tim apart, limb from limb, and grinds the pieces of him to a pulp.

Tim wakes, and with his first breath he vomits, sick, black bile staining his white sheets.

Darkness extends from the corners of his room.

* * *

“Did you have a good time last night? The guy seemed nice,” Martin asks.

Tim pauses in his quest for tea. “You saw—you spoke to him?”

Martin settles in one of the uncomfortable break room chairs. “Oh yeah! He wanted to make sure we knew that you were leaving together. Giuseppe, right? Nice accent. And an optometrist! Must pay well.”

Tim’s hand flies up to his eyes, and it takes every last scrap of will-power not to scratch. Not to give himself away.

“Bit dull, to be honest,” he ends up responding. “Kept talking about my eyes. Not really what I was there for, if you catch my drift.”

Martin does catch his drift, and he stammers in embarrassment.

Tim picks up his tea with a shaky hand and drinks of the dark liquid.

* * *

Tim does dream.

He says: “No. Fuck off, leave me alone. I don’t want anything to do with monsters.”

The shifting darkness responds: _It’s too late, it’s too late. You’re mine, you’ve always been mine._

It is a dream, it must be a dream, because in the dream Tim wields a torch and a lamp. He lights candles and burns paper. 

Every pinpoint of light expands in his eyes, halos upon halos of brightness, until he sees nothing but white.

The darkness is no more; it has been ground down until it is nothing but a smear, an afterimage, a mere afterthought.

But then Tim wakes, and the darkness is everything.

* * *

Tim can’t fucking see.

His eyes aren’t blindfolded: he’s checked and double checked. But his alarm clock, his phone, the windows, none of them give him any source of light.

It’s like being in one of those underground caverns with the rooms so pitch black that you can’t see your hand in front of your face, except Tim is pretty sure he went to bed in his flat and woke up in his flat.

_I see you._

“Well, fuck off,” Tim says, with much more bravado than he feels. The panic is clawing at him. It’s only his experience with Prentiss and the worms that keeps him calm enough for rational thought. He got through a fucking mass of writhing worms. He can beat a little bit of dark.

 _You are mine now, and nothing else may see you_.

For a split second, that statement is comforting. Nothing else can see Tim; that means that Elias can’t see Tim. Elias and the monster he follows are finally entirely separated from him.

But that comfort is gone as soon as the dark presses in on him.

“Look. I think we could come to an agreement,” Tim says. “You clearly want something from me, and I think we could help each other out.”

He tries to recall which of the many, many creepy crawlies that he’s investigated this could be. Too bad that Jon sucks as an archivist, because they still don’t have a cross-referencing system.

Something rough brushes across his cheek, and Tim screams in surprise. The same roughness curls around his mouth, scratching at his lips and then sifting in. His scream dies, and he chokes. He tries to spit the thing out, but it settles into every dip in his mouth. 

That same rough tendril continues to wind around his head. Everywhere it touches it leaves behind little kernels of darkness, a thin layer of it to mask Tim’s face. He can’t scream anymore, but he struggles. He pushes at the thing, only for another one to wrap firmly around his wrists and draw his arms up behind his back, so far that Tim is forced to bend forward or risk agonizing pain.

The dark settles into his ears, fine grit that muffles all sound. All Tim can hear now is the suggestion of his own screams, reverberating inside his throat, the same throat that is stretched open, swallowing darkness, one grain at a time.

It fills his nostrils then, and only the gaps between the grains allow him to breathe at all. His heart beats faster and faster and faster, the panic that he buried rushing up to meet the dark seeping into him. 

_Your eyes are so beautiful_ , the thing sings into his mind. _I would peck them out and feed them to my children._

 _Please, please no,_ Tim begs, squeezing his eyes shut. It makes no difference. Everything was dark before, and it continues to be dark. _Anything else._

 _Anything? Anything. Anything!_ The monster’s roughness scrapes across Tim’s skin. Tim wishes he had worn clothes to bed, though he knows they wouldn’t lend any protection. At this point, he would gladly accept even the illusion of protection.

The limbs—Tim has no idea what they are, long and rough and endlessly flexible—wrap tightly around him. The ones around his wrist don't stop, twisting and twisting and twisting, pulling his hands with them, until his hands are screwed loose and separate entirely. They fall into the darkness.

Tim would hyperventilate if he could breathe at all. He moves a finger, and the darkness—the sand—underneath shifts in return, caressing the palm of his hand.

Then the vines, or tentacles, or whatever they fuck they are slither down the center of his back, between his ass cheeks, and coil around his ankles.

He isn’t surprised when his feet, too, are detached from him, and drop down next to his hands. He wiggles his toes experimentally, and gives a muffled shout when they come into contact with his fingers.

The monster laughs at him and uses its tentacles to pry Tim’s legs apart as far as they will go. The sand beneath Tim’s hands and feet shifts and ripples softly; despite the rough texture, it tickles. Tim laughs involuntarily and inhales more darkness, more sand.

Another set of tentacles come up to embrace him, stopping his writhing. The worst part of all is the way one tentacle insists on rubbing between his cheeks, prodding at his hole. His cock begins to rise alongside the sudden spike of arousal.

 _No, no, no!_ Tim shouts uselessly. He can’t even hear himself anymore, his ears plugged by sand and darkness.

When that first abrasive tendril wraps around his cock, he’s almost happy about it. There’s no way this sandpaper could possibly feel good, and pain is infinitely preferable to the shame of lust. He isn’t like Elias and Jon and Martin, who love their monsters in their own ways and are willing to serve them in every capacity. Tim very much wants the monsters to leave him the fuck alone. He doesn’t get _hard_ for monsters.

Only the sandpaper tentacle doesn’t shred the skin of his cock like he thought it would. It’s gentle, smooth, gripping his cock like any adoring lover. Warm too, like a beach baked by the sun, or at least an approximation of the sun by a being that knows nothing but night.

The thing slides up and down his cock, its grip tight the way Tim likes. How the fuck does it know what he likes? He clenches his fists, and finds he’s holding a fistful of sand. The fact that his hands are free but not attached to his wrists freaks him out, but concentrating on that has to be better than concentrating on how he’s getting harder and harder.

He gives another muffled shout when the first grain of darkness trickles into his ass. If only that were all, if only that single kernel was the end of it. But more and more join that first one, and Tim’s hole clenches around them. Sand by itself is loose, but packed together it’s as hard as stone. A giant stone tentacle dildo, crawling farther and farther into him. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking terrifying.

It would be funny if it weren’t starting to expand. Tim isn’t inexperienced with anal, and he’s taken his fair share of large men and large toys, but this is way beyond that. No lube, no prep, nothing but hard tension in all of his muscles. The pain grows steadily, going from tolerable to unbearable to black out agony.

The monster doesn’t give Tim time to adjust. It begins thrusting in and out lazily, burying so much of the darkness in him that he can feel it pressing against his stomach too. He’s almost glad that he can’t see. He’s happier not seeing his stomach bloated and distended.

Suddenly sand wraps around his left foot. He doesn’t get what’s happening, can’t pay attention to it while he’s breathless from pain and lack of air, but in the next moment that foot is placed against Tim’s body.

Against his empty wrist. 

And still, not until that twisting sensation starts around his wrist, does he really register what’s happening.

The monster screws his foot to his wrist. It does the same with his other foot. That mental image does more to terrify him than anything else so far. He thinks of not!Sasha. He thinks of the monster that wore Danny’s skin. Neither of them looked as unnatural as Tim must look now.

Tim doesn’t want to be a monster. _Please. Please, no._

 _Shh. I just want to see how everything works_ , the monster whispers. It picks up Tim’s hands, and begins to screw them onto his ankles in time to its thrusts into his ass.

When Tim curls his fingers, they encounter the hard tentacle that is feeding into his ass.

He cries. The sand on his face absorbs the moisture immediately, but he cries. His mouth is too full for him to even sob, he can’t take a single heaving breath, but the tears leak out of his eyes just the same.

The monster laughs and coos at him. _Anything, you said. Anything but your eyes. Your master does love its eyes._

Fuck the Beholding. Fuck Elias. Fuck Jon. And fuck Martin for inviting him out. The hate fills him as steadily as the sand and darkness. Maybe if he drowns himself in hatred, it can force the monster out of his body.

He finds one last speck of hatred: his hate for Danny.

Damn Danny for being such a flittery fool. Damn Danny for having no sense.

Damn Danny for dying and leaving Tim behind to despair in the dark.

But even all that deep, lingering resentment isn’t enough to keep the sand from enveloping his cock and sliding in through its slit.

Every single orifice and crack is plugged now. Tim can’t even struggle. His feet flop against the air while his hands push off from hard, packed sand. His ass stretches wider than should be possible. His stomach bulges, brushing against his erection with every breath. His cock is hard and throbbing and burning.

His eyes continue to leak.

 _Do you dream, Tim?_ the monster asks. _I can never tell. I’ve watched for months. But I don’t know. Do you dream?_

The first grain of sand trickles into Tim’s mind.

The monstrous limbs piston into Tim faster, harder than before, pulsing against his prostate while the sandpaper sheath around and inside his cock begins to vibrate.

Tim screams, but it isn’t from pain or horror. It’s an orgasm, more intense than anything Tim has ever experienced. Every ounce of pain is transformed into something bright and beautiful. A metamorphosis. The nightmare becoming a dream that Tim is happy to prolong.

* * *

“I had a funny dream last night,” Elias says. He didn’t knock before he entered the room, but why would he? Elias owns the place, or represents the actual owner.

“Good for you.” Tim moves a box. It’s about the only thing he does around here these days. Move boxes. “Must be nice. Getting a full night’s sleep. Not worrying about monsters.”

Elias crosses the room, stopping just outside of Tim’s reach. The lighting is bad enough here that his face is cast in shadow. At least there's no ghostly Elias trailing behind.

“I don’t often dream. Do you, Tim?”

Tim shrugs. “Dunno.” He picks up a box full of creepy things that can probably murder everybody and carefully steps around Elias. “Fuck off.”

Elias’s eyes are still on Tim. They’re an unnerving, constant presence, pressing in on Tim, trying to steal every ounce of privacy that he has.

He’s so preoccupied with thoughts of Elias that he ends up tripping. The box thunks loudly to the floor, and Tim curses.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. You know me. Two left feet.” He looks back and sees Elias pursing his lips.

“Indeed.”


End file.
